I sleep in a Queen-sized bed complete with a warm and snuggly electric blanket.

When I go to bed, I set the blanket to "4" and all is right with the world. In the morning, the blanket is still working away keeping me all toasty warm. I never, ever remember to turn it off, but when I come back a couple hours later, it has turned itself off.

How does it know I am no longer in the bed?

tanstaafl.

It turns off after a certain amount of time? Probably somewhere been 8-12 hours.

They also have over temp protection, for when a blanket gets piled in a jumble.

I just got an electric blanket and I thought I'd power it through a timer.

Nostalgia moment. In 1978-79, my roomie and I struggled to pay our oil heating bills for the 6-room apartment we rented in an uninsulated triple decker in Jamaica Plain (Boston). He was a 4th-year med student so was never around and I worked graveyard shift in an emergency room/department. We kept the thermostat set at around 52 degrees -- just enough to keep most of the pipes from freezing. On days when we thought we might meet up and make dinner, we turned the thermostat up to about 66F for a few hours.

To improve the chances of sleep, I had disconnected the front door bell, draped stolen wool army blankets over my bedroom windows and I routinely disconnected the telephone before going to bed each morning. I bought a little mechanical light timer at a hardware store in Brookline and every morning at 6:30 AM, it turned on a blue Sunbeam electric blanket. So, by the time I got home around 7:30, all I needed to do was to tune my Zenith TV to channel 3 for white noise, shuck off my grubby clothes, and roll into bed before I passed out.

Not sure about then, but all of the electric blankets now have timers that will turn them off after a set number of hours.

I wish mine did the same. I bought one for my wife (so I could keep the house cooler ), and it freakin' turns its self off after 30 minutes. Ridiculous.

This blanket is about a year old, there is no timer. Just a button to turn it on or off and a rotary dial to select the temperature.

tanstaafl.

Probably works like the soldering station here or something. I often forget to turn it off, but it detects "stability" and turns itself off after half an hour or so.

Or maybe they have a capacitance sensing wire woven in, and if it doesn't change (nobody moving about in bed) then it figures nobody is in bed.

Cheers

mark, Doug,

I shouldn't make a claim about "all" electric blankets as I can only really go on the basis of the two I have owned since ~1990. There is a UL 964 standard for these in the US, but I can't tell if it mandates a shutoff. Anyhow, the one I have on my boat turns off after a while and it won't turn on just by plugging it in (you have to press a button) so it couldn't be used as I did way back when to heat bed up in advance of arrival on scene.

I see there is even an "Electric Blanket Institute" but not much info.

Ha! Sounds tailor made for the Nookie police.

No doubt it has multi-point touch capability.